The fighter is no longer the Everyman.
Was it ever???
The baker or farmhand who follows the ragtag group of professional looters into a dungeon and survives to return back to town isn't a suddenly proficient with every weapon on the planet and has a internal well of stamina to enact incredible acts of martial skill.
The baker is a lucky survivor.
Just who are these "professional looters" the baker is following into the dungeon and why did the baker go?? What did they do: throw muffins at the undead they met?
As the fighter gets more warrior, the rogue gets more tricksy and underhanded, the barbarian gets more primal, the margin for the everyman pushed into adventure and learning on the way is shrinking.
This margin has been practically non-existant from the beginning, and quickly disappeared.
There's a reason why AD&D had 0-level humanoids, for instance.
In the older days, you could run these PCs as fighters with alternatives stat spreads as Ability score mattered less and diving deep into martial specialization was optional. Heck you could even give them an XP bonus as they are more emptyheaded in adventuring and would absorb more than the outright trained.
Really? How? Probably is some Dragon Magazine issue I would guess??
I mean yes the AD&D fighter is more "simple" feature-wise than 5E, for example, but even the AD&D fighter had 4 weapons and all armor (if they could afford it). The secondary skills and later non-weapon proficiencies often filled in the "before" time for the PC.
So I wondered, should this base concept be pulled out of the fighter and solidified as its own class.
What "base concept"? The tradesperson? Merchant? Farmer? and all the rest of the non-adventures which backgrounds, etc. represent? I still disagree wht Fighter ever represented these concepts.
Focusing on the characters unique aspect of learning from allies and experience. With each subclass explaining why they survived or progressed be it luck, destiny, prodigy, fortitude, or the sponsoring of a higher or lower power. Such a class could also be a vehicle for some much desired class structures like a simple warrior, a Constitution based PC, or full healer.
What is your thoughts?
My thoughts are a few:
Introduce 0-level again with a bit of XP to reach 1st and then pick up an adventurer class.
Use sidekicks to represent these concepts (with or without 0-level).
Use non-heroic classes (similar to sidekicks) from prior editions.
Use any or all of the above to develop something of your own.
But I guess I would ask why? Do you want a 15th-level Expert (Baker) PC?
The whole point of having commoners is to not do this sort of thing, so what is your goal and why are you doing it?
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